Now, on the threshold of the third millennium we find our planet beset
by growing climatic instability, disappearing species, collapsing
fisheries, shrinking forests, and eroding soils, while the institutions
of family, community, and the nation-state disintegrate around us and
the gap between rich and poor becomes more unconscionable by the day.

Our obsession with money has led us to create an economic system that
values life only for its contribution to making money. With the
survival of civilization and perhaps even our species now at risk, we
have begun to awaken to the fact that our living planet is the source
of all real wealth and the foundation of our own existence. We must now
look to living systems as our teacher, for our survival depends on
discovering new ways of living ? and making our living - that embody
life's wisdom.

Living Economies
Since the dawn of the scientific revolution, we have been so busy
subduing nature that we have given little thought to the possibility
that living systems might embody wisdom essential to our own lives.

This is beginning to change. Industrial ecology, for example, draws
on life as a model for the design of closed-loop production processes
in which all products and by-products are eventually used and reused,
just as they are in nature. Likewise, a number of organizations are
drawing from living systems models to enhance the creativity and
effectiveness of employees. However, aside from social Darwinists who
use only a narrow spectrum of natural processes to justify an ideology
of unrestrained economic competition, there have been few serious
efforts to distill principles from nature's economies for the design of
human economies as a whole. Since the economy's incentive systems and
feedback loops are so central in determining how we produce and for
whose benefit, and who pays the costs, this area clearly holds enormous
promise.

All living systems, from individual cells to biological communities,
are complex self-organizing economies in which many individual entities
cooperate to sustain themselves and the life of the whole - as when
plants produce food and oxygen needed by animals, which in turn produce
fertilizers and carbon dioxide that feed plant life. As Willis Harman
and Elisabet Sahtouris write in Biology Revisioned, "Trees shelter
birds and insects, bees pollinate flowers, mammals package seeds in
fertilizer and distribute them, fungi and plants exchange materials,
sapotrophs, whether microbes or vultures, recycle, birds warn of
predators, etc." The species that survive and prosper are those that
find a niche in which they meet their own needs in ways that
simultaneously serve others.

Life, then, consists of countless individuals self-organized into
"holarchies" - nested sets of cells, multi-celled organisms, and
multi-species communities or ecosystems with ever greater complexity
and capacity. Each individual functions both as a whole and a part of a
greater whole.

Take our own bodies as an example. Each of us is a composite of more
than 30 trillion individual living cells. Yet even these cells
constitute less than half of our dry weight. The remainder consists of
microorganisms, such as the enteric bacteria and yeasts of our gut that
manufacture vitamins and help metabolize our food. These symbiotic
creatures are as necessary to our survival and healthful function as
our own cells. Each cell and microorganism in our body is an
individual, self-directing entity, yet by joining together they are
able as well to function as a single being with abilities far beyond
those of its parts.

Throughout its life span, each organism constantly renews its
physical structures through cell death and replacement. Ninety-eight
percent of the atoms in our bodies are replaced each year. Yet the
identity, function, and coherence of the body and its individual organs
are self-maintained - suggesting that each cell, organ, and body
possesses some degree of inner knowledge and awareness of both self and
the larger whole of which it is a part.

Life's LessonsLife creates economies for living. We, in
contrast, have created an economy for making money at lifes expense.
What if we were to retool our economy according to the principles of a
living economy? What might be its major features? From our observations
of living systems, we may distill a number of principles helpful both
in understanding why our existing economy is destroying life and how we
might redesign it to serve life. Living systems are, for example:

· Self-Organizing and Cooperative-
Though we once assumed that cells are centrally controlled by their DNA
and the body by the brain through the nervous system, science is
discovering that the body's control processes are actually highly
decentralized and involve a substantial element of self-regulation at
the cellular level.

The regulatory processes of biological communities are even more
radically self-organizing, with no functional equivalent of a
centralized planning or control system.

Yet living economies do have mechanisms to control or eliminate
rogue elements that do not serve the whole. For example, our immune
system is comprised of cells that specialize in identifying and
immobilizing or destroying harmful cells and viruses that pose a threat
to the whole. In a cancer, when a genetic malfunction causes cells to
forget they are a part of the larger whole of the body and unleashes
the pursuit of their unlimited growth, the healthy cells attempt to
destroy the defective cells by cutting off their blood supply.

This has potential implications for how we think about our human
economies. The global corporation, which is programmed by its internal
structures to respond to the incessant demand of financial markets to
seek its own unlimited growth, behaves much like a cancerous tumor.
Furthermore, the economy internal to a corporation is centrally planned
and directed by top management, not to serve the whole of the society
on which its existence depends, but rather to maximize the capture and
flow of money to its top managers and shareholders. These
characteristics - growth at the expense of the whole and centralized
planning - represent serious violations of the principle of cooperative
self-organization in the service of life. Given that the economies
internal to the largest corporations are larger than the economies of
most states, this is cause for serious concern.

Many large corporations do organize their operations around smaller
operating units and worker teams. But because the rights and powers of
ownership flow downward from absentee shareholders whose only interests
in the firm are financial, the corporation's singular goal remains
profit, and any authority delegated to subordinate units can be
withdrawn at any time.

A good first step in creating self-organizing economies that honor
the freedom and responsibility of the individual in economic as well as
in political life would be to sell off those decentralized units to
their stakeholders - people such as workers, customers, suppliers, and
community members. Doing so would make managers accountable to those
who have a living interest in the firm and the health of the community
and natural setting in which it is located.

· Localized and Adapted to Place- Each bio-community creates
its home on a particular place on Earth. Its members organize
themselves into numerous, multi-species sub-communities where, through
a process of progressive experimentation and adaptation, they learn to
optimize the capture, sharing, use, and storage of the resources
available. As each living community adapts itself to the most intricate
details of its particular physical locale, it, in turn, modifies the
physical landscape, creating soil and holding it in place, holding and
releasing water, creating micro-climates - creating the conditions for
the further evolution of the eco-system.

The global human economy likewise could be comprised of a holarchy
of self-reliant, place-based economies that each adapt to the
conditions of its physical place by becoming proficient at the
collection and conservation of energy and the recycling of materials.
Each could be organized to offer all who reside within its borders a
means of livelihood consistent with their full and free development.

Our existing global economy, by contrast, is dominated by financial
markets and corporations programmed to reorient the purpose of local
economies from meeting local needs to meeting the financial interests
of distant institutions. They do this by imposing cultural and genetic
monocultures and by extracting as much wealth as possible while
contributing as little as possible in return. As corporate control over
markets, technology, land, and other resources becomes more pervasive,
people and communities become less able to adapt their local economies
to local needs and conditions.

Humanity has a long history of achieving sustainable, long-term
relationship to place. A small farmer who knows the land and its
characteristics learns to adapt her crops and methods to local micro
environments to get high yields without chemicals, energy subsidies,
and wastage. So too an economy comprised of many decision makers can
adapt efficiently to the opportunities of a locality, and to the needs
and preferences of each of its members, in a way that is impossible
when critical decisions are made by distant corporate managers.

Furthermore, the need to manage the business firm in service to more
than purely financial values becomes self-evident to decision makers
who must live with the social and environmental consequences of their
decisions. They are unlikely to sacrifice schools, the environment,
product safety, suppliers, employment security, wages, worker health,
and other aspects of a healthy community for short-term, shareholder
gain when they are the workers, customers, suppliers and community
members as well as the owners.

· Bounded by Managed, Permeable Borders- To sustain itself,
life must be open to exchange with its environment. Yet to maintain its
internal coherence, it must be able to manage these exchanges. It thus
depends on boundaries that are both managed and permeable - neither
totally open nor totally closed. If the cell had no wall, its matter
and energy would mix with the matter and energy of its environment and
it would die. Multi-celled organisms must have a skin or other
protective covering. Bio-communities are bounded by oceans, mountains,
and climatic zones. Even our planet isolates itself from the rest of
the universe - its gravitational field holds in place an atmosphere and
ozone layer that control the exchange of radiation with the larger
universe.

Human economies similarly require permeable - but managed - borders
at each level of organization from the household and community to the
region and nation that allow them to maintain the integrity, coherence,
and resource efficiency of their internal processes and to protect
themselves from predators.

Political and economic borders define a community of shared
interests, identity, and trust - what we call social capital, which is
a form of embodied energy that makes a community far more than a
collection of individuals and physical structures. Without borders,
this energy dissipates, much as the cell's energy dissipates if its
cell wall is removed. On the other hand, impermeable boundaries result
in stagnation and a loss of opportunity for the exchange of useful
information, knowledge, and culture essential to continuing innovation.
As with all living beings, living economies need permeable and managed
boundaries.

The institutions of money have been using international trade and
investment agreements to remove the political borders essential to
maintaining the economic integrity of communities and nations . [See
article on the MAI.] This process
leaves economic resources exposed to predatory extraction, leading to a
breakdown of the trust and cooperation essential to any community. [See
Jonathan Rowe.]

The real agenda of those promoting these trade agreements is not to
eliminate borders, but rather to redraw them so as to establish that
what once belonged to the community to be shared among its members now
belongs to private corporations for the benefit of their managers and
shareholders. Thus, in the name of property rights, corporations draw
heavily defended borders around their lands, factories, offices,
shopping centers, broadcast facilities, publications, technologies, and
intellectual property. With the protection of private guards and
lawyers backed by the public's police and military forces, they thus
assure that all uses of these assets benefit their private corporate
interest and they silence voices of protest.

· Frugal and Sharing- Biological communities are highly
efficient in energy capture and recycling, living exemplars of the
motto, "Waste not, want not." Energy and materials are continuously
recycled for use and reuse within and between cells, organisms, and
species with a minimum of loss, as the wastes of one become the
resources of another. Frugality and sharing are the secret of life's
rich abundance, a product of its ability to capture, use, store, and
share available material and energy with extraordinary efficiency.

Human economies can be similarly organized to contribute to life's
abundance through the conservation, frugal use, equitable sharing, and
continuous recycling of available energy, information, and material
resources to the end of meeting the needs of all that lives within
their borders.

Our existing global economy creates islands of power and privilege
in a large sea of poverty. The fortunate hoard and squander resources
on frivolous consumption, while others are denied a basic means of
living. Furthermore, those who control the creation and allocation of
money use this power to generate speculative profits. These profits
increase the claims of the speculators to the wealth created through
the labor and creative effort of others - while contributing nothing in
return to the wealth creation process. [For elaboration of this
argument see David C. Korten, Money versus Wealth YES! Spring 1997.]

In our present economy unemployment, hoarding, and speculation are
endemic, resulting in a grossly inefficient use of life's resources. In
nature, unemployment and hoarding beyond one's own need are rare, and
there is no equivalent to financial speculation.

· Diverse and Creative-
Life exhibits an extraordinary drive to learn, innovate, and freely
share knowledge toward the realization of new potentials. The result is
a rich diversity of species and cultures that give the bio-community
resilience in times of crisis and provide the building blocks for
future innovation.

History provides ample evidence that the same drive is inherent in
humans as well. Our most brilliant scientists, innovators, and teachers
have been those driven not by the promise of financial rewards, but by
an inner compulsion to learn, to know, and to share their knowledge.

In our present global economy, corporate controlled mass media
create monocultures of the mind that portray greed and exclusion as the
dominant human characteristics. Intellectual property rights are used
to preclude the free sharing of information, technology, and culture
essential to creative innovation in the community interest.

We live at a time when our very survival depends on rapid innovation
toward the creation of living economies and societies. Such innovation
depends on vigorous community level experimentation supported by the
creative energies of individuals everywhere. It is far more likely to
come from diverse self-directed democratic communities that control
their economic resources and freely share information and technology
than from communities whose material and knowledge resources are
controlled by distant corporate bureaucracies intent on appropriating
wealth to enrich their shareholders.

From Global Capitalism to Mindful MarketsIn my newly released book, The Post-Corporate World: Life After Capitalism,
I call economies with these life-affirming characteristics "mindful
market economies," because they combine mindful ethical cultures with
self-organizing economic relationships that bear a remarkable
resemblance to the market economy described more than 200 years ago by
British moral philosopher Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations.
Smith wrote about place-based economies comprised of small, locally
owned enterprises that function within a community-supported ethical
culture to engage people in producing for the needs of the community
and its members. The economy Smith envisioned is nearly the mirror
opposite of our existing global economy, which is best described by the
term capitalism.

The term capitalism was coined by European philosophers of the
mid-1800s to describe an economic regime in which the benefits of
productive assets are monopolized by the few to the exclusion of the
many who through their labor make those assets productive.

The relationship of capitalism to a market economy is that of a
cancer to a healthy body. Much as the cancer kills its host - and
itself - by expropriating and consuming the host's energy, the
institutions of capitalism are expropriating and consuming the living
energies of people, communities, and the planet. And like a cancer, the
institutions of capitalism lack the foresight to anticipate and avoid
the inevitable deathly outcome.

We have a collective cancer, and our survival depends on depriving
it of its power by restructuring our economic rules and institutions to
end absentee ownership, rights without accountability, corporate
welfare, and financial speculation. Specific measures to these ends are
elaborated in The Post-Corporate World.

At the same time, we can direct the energy we reclaim from the
institutions of capitalism toward the institutions of the mindful
market. These institutions exist today, quite likely in your community.
They include values-based family, community, and worker-owned
businesses, consumer cooperatives, community banks and credit unions,
organic farmers, independent health food shops, print shops
specializing in recycled papers and soy-based inks, farmers markets,
local restaurants featuring local organic produce, local water and
power utilities, holistic health practitioners, fair traded coffee
shops, and organic wineries.

Mindful businesses are being matched by the mindful consumption
choices fostered by the rapidly growing voluntary simplicity movement.
Tens of thousands of socially responsible investors are making mindful
investment choices.

These and countless other positive initiatives are creating the
outlines for self-organizing, life-sustaining economies that are:· radically democratic· rooted in place· comprised of human-scale firms, owned by and accountable to people with a stake in their function and impacts· frugal with energy and resources, allocating them efficiently to meet needs, recycling the "wastes" · culturally, socially, and economically diverse, supportive of innovation and the free sharing of knowledge· mindful of responsibility to self and community · bounded by permeable borders, that allow democratic self-regulation.

In such an economy, enterprises would be owned by community members
who work in them, depend on their products, and supply their inputs -
with each entitled to a fair return to their labor and their
investment. [See Ted Howard and Gar Alperovitz page 29.]

Community economies would be self-organized by community members
according to their self-determined priorities and mutually agreed
rules. They would have their own speculation-proof currencies to
facilitate local exchange. [See Richard Douthwaite.]

The Earth and its resources would be managed as the common property
of posterity, a sacred trust whose principal is to be maintained as its
product is equitably shared. [See Peter Barns.]

The design of production-consumption processes would give high
priority to working in balance with the natural productive processes of
the ecosystem, using local renewable material and energy resources, and
generating zero waste. Each community economy would have its
distinctive features and culture reflecting its history, the
circumstances of its place, and the preferences of its members. [See
Appalachian Kitchens and Indigenous Voices.] All
would engage in mutually beneficial trade with their neighbors on their
own terms, while freely sharing useful information and technology.

If enough of us decide we value life more than money, we have the
means and the right to create an economy that nurtures life and
restores money to its proper role as life's servant. Moreover, the
actions involved are familiar and give expression to principles that
underlie millions of years of evolution, along with more recent human
values of democracy, community, and freedom. Curing a cancer is rarely
easy, but once we become clear that the task centers on reclaiming our
life energies to live fully and well, this cure might actually be fun.

This issue of YES! is filled with examples of positive initiatives
and ideas for what you can do to cure the cancer and nurture the
mindful market.

David C. Korten is board chair of the Positive Futures Network,
president of the People-Centered Development Forum, and author of When
Corporations Rule the World. This article is based on his newly
released book " The Post-Corporate World: Life After Capitalism",
co-published by Kumarian Press and Berrett-Koehler Publishers. The
author gratefully acknowledges Dr. Mae-Wan Ho and Elisabet Sahtouris
for their insights into living systems on which this article draws.

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